Bridge Road Brewers – Mayday Hills Sour Amber Ale

The tour was twenty-two venues in twenty-five days. Up the east coast. To begin with we were professional, clean, clinical. For such a mild-mannered bunch to go off the edge so quickly… the hedonism and debauchery came out of nowhere. A week in and every night got wilder: rolling drunk, tequila shots in biker bars, wrestling on sidewalks, hot tubs full of strangers. Lots of lost time, blanked memories.

Every morning after: we’d tend to our wounds and steel our stomachs and pile back into the van to start the whole process again. Chewing up miles and miles of highway. Murdering our livers and killing off synapses by the truck-load. Heady, heady times.

By the end of it all our gear smelled of stale beer and dirty socks. It’s a miracle the airline let us on the plane home. I was so drunk I was almost sober again. The last week had been a blur. I don’t remember how I got home from the airport.

When I woke up in my bed the morning after I could barely hear. I said to my girlfriend, ‘This is heavy. I think I’ve got tinea.’

She smirked and said, ‘I think you mean tinnitus.’

I made a mental note: as funny as it was at the time, never let the drummer stick his toes in your ears again.